Passing It Onhttps://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/
A site dedicated to preserving, celebrating and sharing family and personal history.en-US2018-11-01T15:12:09-05:00

Fond remembrances of a true Railroad Man from Council Bluffshttps://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2018/11/walter-b-lehmer-was-a-railroad-man-the-capitalization-is-no-mistake-walter-better-known-as-jack-to-most-was-my-dad-and-a.html
Walter B. Lehmer was a Railroad Man. The capitalization is no mistake. Walter, better known as Jack to most, was my dad and a loyal employee of Union Pacific Railroad throughout his working career, which spanned the better part of...Walter B. Lehmer was a Railroad Man. The capitalization is no mistake. Walter, better known as Jack to most, was my dad and a loyal employee of Union Pacific Railroad throughout his working career, which spanned the better part of four decades.

It's no exaggeration to say that railroads were the lifeblood of my hometown of Council Bluffs, Iowa. From the time President Abraham Lincoln stood on a bluff and pronounced Council Bluffs as the eastern terminus for the country's first transcontinental railroad, the iron horse was the town's economic engine. Growing up in the 1950s, the railroad culture was ubiquitous. You couldn't expect to cross town without being delayed by a train of some sort. The congestion on the city's main drag was alleviated some by a long-awaited viaduct that crossed dozens of tracks in the mid-1950s, but you were reminded of the industry's influence at every turn.

If you rode a bus (and many of us in the 1950s did), you probably knew that the Fifth Avenue line made a slight detour on 21st street, turning south towards the Golden Spike monument. The monument (which has remained standing well after its 1939 construction as part of the promotion for the film, Union Pacific), wasn't the destination, however. In my youth, it was delivery of workers to the blocks-long mail handling center that was a joint venture of the U.S. Post Office and Union Pacific. Prior to that, the area had been home to a magnificent 200-room hotel and restaurant catering to the U.P.'s many passengers. It was while working in the restaurant that my grandmother met my grandfather.

For decades, the Omaha & Council Bluffs Street Railway Company shuttled passengers around the city, to Lake Manawa and to the ferries that once delivered passengers to the Nebraska side of the Missouri River. Though it was long gone before our family moved to the southwest corner of 28th Street and Avenue E in 1948, we were told that a trolley line once ran north on 28th Street to the river, where, presumably, it connected with the historic double-swing Illinois Central bridge, a major rail connector between Iowa and Nebraska.

As you might expect, Council Bluffs was full of railroad men, especially, it seemed, on the west side of town where most of our friends and relatives lived. Dad came by his railroad roots honestly. His dad was a boilermaker and machinist who carried a sliver of metal in one of his eyes to his grave, the result of a work accident at the Union Pacific shops. Dad's paternal grandfather never worked for the railroad, but he came close. After closing up his blacksmith shop in North Bend, Nebraska, Cal Lehmer followed his son to Council Bluffs, taking a job with Griffin Wheel Company, one of the nation's biggest producers of iron railway wheels.

Nearly every branch of our family tree included a railroad employee or two, mostly with the Union Pacific. Both of my brothers and I worked for U.P. at one time or another. My work at Union Station as mail handler, coach cleaner and carman's helper made it possible for me to get through college. My youngest brother, Dave, stuck it out for an entire career, retiring from Union Pacific. Nepotism wasn't only practiced at U.P., it was practically mandatory.

Dad held a few other jobs after graduating from high school. The first was pushing wheat cereal for Tommy Tucker Cereal Company, an enterprise (and job) that didn't last long. Then came stints at Connolly and Wheeler drug stores where he dished up banana splits and cherry phosphates. His next job took him west, to 112th and Center streets in Omaha, with the Dutch Mill Oil Company, where his long work days and lack of a car, made him a temporary resident, taking over one of the cabins in the cabin camp (a forerunner of motels). He took his meals in the complex's restaurant and pocketed a neat $50 a month for his efforts. He made enough to buy his first car -- a 1931 Model A coupe -- and take a job closer to home at Omaha Standard, where he was building truck bodies when the U.P. called.

"In those days you didn’t just go to work for the railroad," Dad explained. "You put in an application. If you had a relative working there, you had to have a relative, then you could go to work. And they called me, so I went to work over there."

That was in April 1941. Dad was eight months into his four-year apprenticeship when the Japanese invaded Pearl Harbor.

"I was 21 years old and I knew I was bye-bye," Dad said. "I sold my car so I wouldn’t have to mess with it later. The railroad union came and told us that we were working for an essential industry and we weren’t going to get drafted. That’s when we went ahead and got married"

"I got called to the Army," Dad said. "I had to take a physical. I came out of the doctor’s office and went over to the Navy recruiting office and said 'I just took a physical for the Army and I don’t want to go to the Army.' He said, 'You don’t have to. Go into Sea Bees.”

So, for the next three years the apprenticeship was put on hold and Dad served as a storekeeper in the U.S. Navy, half of that time in the South Pacific. As he and Mom waited out the late stages of pregnancy in Ventura, Calif., after his discharge in October 1945, Dad had to make a decision: go to work in the Southern California oilfields or return to Iowa and the railroad.

"I took a job out there," Dad said. "She [Mom] couldn’t travel for a month. The people that we rented a house from, he worked in the oil fields. He was a supervisor up there and he got me that job and I could have stayed. I had another offer, too. I could have gone to work for a wholesale auto parts company because of my storekeeper rating. I thought about it quite a bit whether I wanted to stay in California or come back to the railroad. You were the only grandchild on her side and kind of a little pressure on us to come back. I probably made the right move."

Dad resumed his career as a Railroad Man in late 1945. He was given one-year credit towards his apprenticeship due to his military service and by the time he was given journeyman status on April 7, 1948, he was already set up to be a foreman.

In May 1950, Dad was sent to Chicago to help inspect during construction of 50 new U.P. passenger cars. I spent part of that summer in Chicago before starting school in Council Bluffs.

"You learned a lot of things there," Dad said. "We had an apartment in the hotel. You learned that brown cows gave chocolate milk. Luke Appling lived in the same building. Wasn’t he the White Sox shortstop? You talked to him; he talked to you."

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, I remember Dad working odd shifts as he built on his career. For a brief time, our careers overlapped at Omaha's Union Station, which I wrote a bit about here. But, during my senior year in high school, his career threatened to derail my own plans.

The way I remember it, sometime during my junior year of high school, Dad had the chance to accept the General Car Foreman's job at Green River, Wyoming. The General Car Foreman job is a big one in the railroad business and it was definitely a promotion. When I got wind of it, I adamantly declared that I wasn't going. I'd stay with relatives until I finished high school, I said. Whether Dad turned down the job or whether it was just floated as a possibility, I'll never know, but Dad didn't go.

Instead, he joined the U.P. staff a few years later, a major promotion into the executive ranks. The job meant a lot of travel for Dad, sometimes out of the country, primarily to direct recovery efforts after derailments, but some other duties that he wasn't quite as comfortable with.

Dad was doubtless a solid member of the U.P. staff. As straight an arrow as there ever was, he was a strict by-the-book guy. I'm sure this was a factor in what I think was the biggest assignment of his career: Escorting the reclusive Howard Hughes to the West Coast.

Dad was the railroad's official representative on the rail journey, which left Omaha headed for Los Angeles in the dead of night. Hughes had his own rail car in those days and Dad followed in a U.P. private car. The Hughes contingent pulled a sleight of hand maneuver when it had the train stopped in the Nevada desert and someone thought to be Hughes was carried from the train and placed in a waiting ambulance, apparently headed to Las Vegas.

The train continued on to Los Angeles, where a cadre of inquisitive journalists sat in waiting. As the railroad's official representative, Dad was peppered with questions. Since he was as in the dark as anyone, he had nothing to say. I'm pretty sure there's film sitting in TV archives somewhere of my frustrated father repeating "no comment" to every question. The situation was unnerving and he was soon off the staff, promoted to his dream job: General Car Foreman in Council Bluffs.

He oversaw the Union Pacific rail yards in Council Bluffs for the last 13 years of his career. No one was more surprised than me when he opted to retire in 1981 at the age of 60. As a true Railroad Man I just expected him to go on forever.

He, obviously had other plans. For the next 27 years, he and Mom played golf, attended Sea Bee reunions, doted on grand-kids and great grand-kids and piled on the miles on a succession of motor homes, flitting from one country music jam session to another.

Retirement for my parents was pretty much a resumption of their five-month courtship in 1942, when they were both members of a roller skating club that hit all the hot rinks in Western Iowa.

As my Dad wrote to Mom in May 1942 when he was visiting an uncle in Long Beach, Calif.: “You are the only one to whom I have written every day. Gee whiz I wish you were here. I saw one roller rink last night in North Long Beach and from the bus it looked like a classy affair. I intend to skate and will I ever miss my waltzing and 2 step partner."

Photo: Walter B. Lehmer in his role as General Car Foreman of Council Bluffs, Iowa

]]>Larry Lehmer2018-11-01T15:12:09-05:00Remembering Jim Pollock: A good friend, gone too soonhttps://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2018/04/here-it-is-another-mid-april-in-iowa-the-weather-toggling-between-snowy-and-slippery-and-drizzly-and-gloomy-and-im-missing.html
Here it is, another mid-April in Iowa, the weather toggling between snowy and slippery and drizzly and gloomy. And I'm missing an old friend, Jim Pollock, gone these six years now. For years Jim and I were co-workers at The...Here it is, another mid-April in Iowa, the weather toggling between snowy and slippery and drizzly and gloomy. And I'm missing an old friend, Jim Pollock, gone these six years now.

For years Jim and I were co-workers at The Des Moines Register. Actually, Jim was one of the first people I met when I showed up for work on The Register's sports copy desk the afternoon of May 13, 1981. To the rest of the world that was the day the pope was shot. For me, it was the day I started working alongside John Sotak, the Daves - Randall, Reynolds and Stockdale - Bill Huffman, John Millea, Bob Spurgeon and Jim Pollock.

As I would quickly learn, it was an all-star crew, editors snatched up from smaller Iowa papers blended with young local talent, many from Des Moines' Drake University's fine journalism program. Despite being the most soft-spoken of the team, Jim stood out for his self-deprecating humor, wry wit and uncanny ability to cut to the core of any issue. He laid bare Iowa tropes like the myth that the weather gods perpetually jinxed the girls' state basketball tournament with an unseemly string of blizzards. "Maybe it's because the tournament is in February in Iowa," he scoffed.

You can count on one hand the number of Register co-workers I've had to dinner at my house. Jim was one. He and his wife, Nola, were relative newlyweds and childless when they arrived for dinner. My wife Linda and I thought we might have convinced them to remain childless after supping with us and our brood of three children ranging in age from 2 to 11 at the time, but Jim and Nola went on to have three great kids of their own.

Jim, a small-town boy from State Center, Iowa, settled with his family in the tiny exurban community of Bondurant, which he affectionately referred to as the "Bondo metroplex." Our careers at The Register diverged in the mid-1980s when newsroom managers recognized Jim's ability to transform the most humdrum news story into concise, engaging prose. So, during a newsroom reorganization, Jim was moved into a reporting role. He quickly staked out ownership of one of the best-read and most-anticipated feature stories of the year, an annual compilation of quirky "Below the Fold" stories, those that in newspaper lingo weren't of sufficient news value to be seen on a newsstand. Of course, in Jim's hands, they were must-reads.

I remained in sports, which, for various reasons, is treated in most newsrooms as something of an anomaly. At The Register, once a statewide paper that reported sports scores from every high school in the state, the sports department was a busy (and noisy) place on high school game nights. As a result, The Register eventually relocated sports to a room apart from the main newsroom. With the physical separation, plus the fact that Jim worked mostly days and I frequently worked nights, we seldom saw each other for several years.

Eventually, Jim left The Register and took a job at Meredith, a magazine publisher based in Des Moines. He worked for a financial magazine for a while then joined the staff of Wood magazine, a good fit for Jim, an accomplished woodworker. In 2004, he returned to news as the managing editor at The Business Record, Des Moines' preeminent business publication.

After leaving The Register, Jim and I would get together for an occasional lunch, maybe 2-3 times a year. They were like any lunches with friends. We talked about family, mutual acquaintances and how the world was changing. Jim seemed genuinely perplexed by the gentrification movement that was building steam in downtown Des Moines. "Who's going to live in all these places?" he'd ask. Jim was one of the few people who knew of my active job search in the early 2000s, including near misses at jobs with Younkers, Iowa Cultural Affairs and the Omaha World-Herald. He very nearly landed me a job at Meredith, too, as detailed in this blog post.

Jim was among the first to know when I decided to launch my own personal history business in 2005. As I was setting up my home office, Jim helped me transport a heavy oak desk in his truck from the furniture place up a flight of stairs to my office, all for the cost of a lunch. A real bargain.

It was with great sadness that I learned Jim was sick in April 2012. His illness advanced quickly and he was in hospice and dead before I could visit him.

I've lost a lot of Register friends over the years, but Jim's death has affected me the most. It's hard for me to explain. We didn't see each other often, but each meeting was memorable, if for its ordinariness. It's kind of how I remember my family growing up. There are many memorable events, sure, but what I remember most easily are family dinners where my mom and dad, brothers Ron and Dave are around the table discussing our day. Our dog, Rusty, is begging for scraps from the table. Nothing more specific than that, just a feeling.

After Jim died, The Business Record published a book of Jim's Transition columns. Nola graciously sent me copy and, while some of the columns are now dated, Jim's easy wit and fluid style bring a smile to my face every time I read one. Here's an excerpt from Jan. 9, 2006, where Jim writes about selling the family farm after 137 years:

"South of the driveway, submerged in thick grass and weed, is a little chunk of concrete with my older sister's name on it. It was originally the base of a clothesline post, but when a visitor found it, she gently asked if Judy was the name of a family pet. No, I said, that's my sister; she's in Ames. That really threw her, because she thought it was a gave marker. That's right, I said. In my family, we believe that when you die, you go to Ames."

Jim was buried In Ashton Cemetery in rural Jasper County. We visited Jim's grave shortly after burial. As the photo shows, I left a pica pole (newspeople know what that is) at the gravesite to commemorate his service to journalism. It's a small cemetery. So remote, So quiet. So beautiful. So perfect.

]]>Larry Lehmer2018-04-18T12:35:19-05:00Remembering Dad on the 97th anniversary of his birthhttps://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2017/11/memories-of-my-father-on-his-birthday.html
Today would be my dad's 97th birthday. Although he died nearly four years ago, dad, Walter B. Lehmer, lived to see 93 of those birthdays, 66 of them while married to my mother. Dad and I were not particularly close....Today would be my dad's 97th birthday. Although he died nearly four years ago, dad, Walter B. Lehmer, lived to see 93 of those birthdays, 66 of them while married to my mother.

Dad and I were not particularly close. In fact, it was mostly an "oil and water" relationship in the years we lived under the same roof. (That roof, incidentally, literally topped "the house that Jack built"). But, as time went on and I became a parent myself, I gained a greater appreciation for what he did for his family. As the first born of a couple of first-borns themselves, we each had a bit of an independent streak. Considering that my parents were children of The Great Depression and I was of the much more prosperous post World War II generation, it was, perhaps, inevitable that we wouldn't always see things eye to eye. Of course, I lost most clashes with Dad, many of them ending with "because I say so."

But I truly believe that he always had the best interests of his children at heart.

As I alluded to earlier, Dad built his own house at a time when his career with Union Pacific Railroad was just starting to blossom. Money had to be tight when he bought truckloads of lumber reclaimed from old boxcars for sub flooring. Frugality was the norm through much of the early years as he toiled as a carman before rising to the foreman ranks. My brothers and I took turns sitting on a stool in the basement while he buzz cut our hair. He took cheese sandwiches to work during second and third tricks (evening and overnight shifts), often bringing home half to share with his boys.

But he also brought us a dog just because, well, boys need a dog (and, truthfully, because Mom fell in love with this particular one). This was the same man who turned down a postwar job in the California oilfields so Mom could return to Iowa and show off her brand-new baby (me). One of my favorite (long lost) home movies is of Dad with his young sons sitting at a small table in a closet pretending to have a picnic, drinking from small metal cups that sat on small metal saucers. It sounds suspiciously like tea time, but I doubt that is what we rambunctious boys called it.

Dad wasn't much into sports although he did enjoy bowling and golf as an older adult. Nevertheless, when my church little league team needed a coach, he stepped up. In the summer of 1957, he took my brothers and me on a day train trip to Kansas City so we could see a major league baseball game. (It wasn't much of a game, Boston beating Kansas City, 16-0, but I did get to see Ted Williams in his final season). Ironically, it was softball that brought my parents together. They met when Dad was hitting grounders to his sister Phyllis' team, the same team Mom played for.

I like to say that I worked my way through college, but most of that work was because of Dad. His railroad connections got me jobs as a mail handler in Council Bluffs and Omaha and a variety of jobs at Omaha's Union Station in the mid-1960s. My last railroad job was as a full-time, union dues-paying, midnight to 8 a.m. coach cleaner while still a full-time student at Omaha University. I spent much of those two years sleeping in my car between classes. I also spent a couple hours each night sleeping on the job.

A coach cleaner's job at Union Station in those days didn't consist of cleaning coaches at all. Our job was to put drinking water in passenger cars. As the train pulled into the station, we stood at its side, trying to knock down the handles that would release the air pressure from the water tanks as the train passed. This saved time, since a nearly empty tank took a while to bleed off. Then we drug hoses from pits and filled them up. It was actually an artful ballet when trains were long and you had to work more than one hose among several cars.

As a major stop on UP's main east-west route, we typically handled up to six trains each night. If they were on time, the last train would rumble through around 4 a.m. If the train was westbound, they would typically add cars. Conversely, cars would be cut from eastbound trains and shunted onto stub tracks so passengers could continue sleeping, if they wished. Few passengers on the coach cars did, though. Typically, one of the coach cleaners would check out the coach cars on the stub, under the guise of cleaning, which was actually done later in the day in Council Bluffs, across the Missouri River. What he was really doing, though, was looking for an empty coach. If one was found, most of the workers whose work day was essentially over, settled in for a nap. At least one of us would remain in the work shanty in case the rest of needed to be summoned back to work. Or woke up before our shift ended.

One day no one woke me. It was only the jostling movement that woke me, just before the switch engine pulling the cars toward Council Bluffs reached the bridge. I caught the eye of a switchman, got off the train and picked my way through the rocky track bed back to the station and the shanty. Of course, the third trick guys were long gone and I was greeted by a host of mostly unfamiliar faces of the day crew as I sheepishly approached my locker. I'm sure I made some lame excuse, but everyone knew what had happened. I'm sure that included my dad, the day foreman that particular day, who just looked up briefly from his desk in his adjoining office.

Although he must have been embarrassed to learn that his son had been literally sleeping on the job and pretty much flaunted it in front of people he had the duty of supervising, we never talked about it. My railroad career ended not long after that incident and Dad went on to higher management positions on the U.P. staff (where he once escorted Howard Hughes to the West Coast) and as General Car Foreman of Council Bluffs, which is a much bigger deal than it sounds.

He retired within weeks of my moving to Des Moines in 1981 and our contacts became even less frequent than before. After Mom died in 2008, it became clear that Dad's mild dementia was getting worse. My brothers Ron and Dave assumed most caretaker duties for Dad in his later years but I would occasionally make the 125-mile west to take him to medical appointments. Even as his dementia worsened, I was pleased that he always knew who I was, often introducing me to others as "my son, Larry." Sometimes he'd introduce me to the same person twice within minutes.

Dad's birthdate of Nov. 22 was usurped on his 43rd birthday in 1963 by the terrible events in Dallas, Texas, but I always remember it for what it meant to me as I was growing up -- that Walter B. "Jack" Lehmer was one day younger than Stan Musial. To a young baseball card collector from Council Bluffs, Iowa, that meant something.

P.S. Here's a picture of my grandparents taken at their home just a few months before Dad was born.

]]>Larry Lehmer2017-11-22T11:21:42-06:00My (embarrassingly) brief career in law enforcementhttps://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2017/09/my-brief-career-in-law-enforcement.html
There are key decision points in every person's life where one's life may have been very different had the decision been made another way. I had to make one of those important choices nearly 50 years ago, in November 1968....There are key decision points in every person's life where one's life may have been very different had the decision been made another way. I had to make one of those important choices nearly 50 years ago, in November 1968.

It was in Air Force basic training, in an innocuous classroom at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where my entire flight of trainees was assembled to fill out some important paperwork considering our Air Force careers. It was one of those basic training rarities - a chance to actually decide something. Each of us could pick one of three options: 1) a career field; 2) a first duty station; or 3) a chance at attending Officers Training School.

Trainees picking a career field or first duty station were guaranteed to get what they wanted, a real bonus for those who entered the Air Force to learn a particular trade or who were exceedingly homesick. Since neither option appealed to me, I rolled the dice at a shot at OTS, and promptly forgot about it. I was having second thoughts by the end of basic, though, when I learned that I would be remaining at Lackland for another six weeks to attend security police training. It was near the end of that training that I got the word that I would be sticking around Lackland even longer as a member of OTS class 69-02.

Orders to a Kansas AFB were canceled and another SP grad and I were place on "casual" status while we waited for our OTS class to begin. We took a week's leave before returning to Lackland where we were assigned to the base Security Police squadron. Since we were to be there just a short time, we really didn't have any duties. We spent most days moving furniture and assembling dormitory bunk beds. A daily duty was to provide music for the noon pass in review required of many trainees. Every day around 11:45 we'd assume our positions in a dorm window overlooking the parade grounds where we'd proceed to play tape cartridges of patriotic music and the national anthem. We especially appreciated the arrival of the training admin officer, a first lieutenant, who arrived a minute or two before noon in his cherry red Dodge Charger in what appeared by his demeanor to be an intrusion into his day. That'll be us in a couple of years, we thought as he stood on a podium to review the troops.

The routine was broken one day when our NCO thought it might be a good idea for us to get a taste of real-life military justice.

"There's a trainee that's being court martialed today," he said. "You should go."

We walked the several blocks to the courtroom, arriving just in time to see the young airman testifying. Seems he had been caught shoplifting two or three audio cassettes from the base exchange.

"I didn't mean to take them," he said. "I saw a buddy outside and I was just going out to get money from him to pay for them when they grabbed me."

The officers hearing the case didn't buy it. They swiftly decided his fate: a busting of rank to airman basic, some sort of fine and 30 days in confinement. Not only was the verdict swift, it was harsh, my buddy and I agreed as we walked back to our squadron headquarters.

The NCO asked what happened and we started to tell him about how this tribunal of officers threw the book at this young airman but he raised his hand as if to stop us.

"No, no. What happened to the prisoner?" he asked.

That's when it dawned on us: we were actually supposed to be working as security policemen, not mere observers. The NCO quickly shuffled us into a van and we drove back to the courtroom where we found the prisoner sitting. We took him into custody and delivered him to the stockade.

Fortunately, our careers in law enforcement officially ended on June 30, 1969, when my buddy and I were finally commissioned as second lieutenants. That was a good day for us ... and for the Air Force security police.

Larry Lehmer is the author of The Day the Music Died and Bandstandland and a personal history consultant. Contact him via e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

]]>Larry Lehmer2017-09-28T16:23:47-05:00Natural disasters rob people of more than "stuff"https://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2017/09/man-floods-are-bad-so-are-hurricanes-tornadoes-earthquakes-wildfires-and-mudslides-no-matter-where-you-live-in-the-unit.html
Man, floods are bad. So are hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires and mudslides. No matter where you live in the United States, you're at risk of one natural disaster or another. But, no matter where you live in the United States,...Man, floods are bad. So are hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires and mudslides. No matter where you live in the United States, you're at risk of one natural disaster or another. But, no matter where you live in the United States, you can get help as you recover from the devastation wrought from Mother Nature. When the going gets tough ...

Following these disasters there are lots of promises about rebuilding, often with the addendum: "better than before." There's another familiar post-disaster refrain: "You can always replace the stuff, but you can't replace people." On one level, that's true but, from a family history perspective, that bromide just doesn't cut it.

You may be able to replace that flat screen TV, but what about that end table handcrafted by a great-great-great-great grandfather? You may still have those photos on your smartphone from last spring's trip to Florida, but what about that family portrait of your Irish descendants from 1888?

Truth is, natural disasters often rob us of those things most important to us, our material connections to our past. Honestly, sometimes things are just beyond our control and there's no equating a human life with a material object, but some stuff you just can't replace.

Larry Lehmer is an author and personal history consultant. Contact him via e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

]]>Larry Lehmer2017-09-08T09:55:41-05:00Don't let the artifacts of your family's history slip awayhttps://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2017/08/much-family-history-slips-through-the-cracks-through-the-generations-items-are-misplaced-destroyed-neglected-overlooked.html
Much family history slips through the cracks. Through the generations, items are misplaced, destroyed, neglected, overlooked or simply tossed because somewhere along the line their significance faded. Calvin Riley has made it a personal mission over the last 40 years...Much family history slips through the cracks. Through the generations, items are misplaced, destroyed, neglected, overlooked or simply tossed because somewhere along the line their significance faded.

Calvin Riley has made it a personal mission over the last 40 years to keep such items from slipping into the trash heap of history. Riley, a retired English teacher living in St. Louis, Mo., began collecting black memorabilia four decades ago. He spent countless hours scouring St. Louis' basements and attics for artifacts he considered important to black culture over the years. He found a chair made by a slave, uniforms worn by black porters, civil rights posters, historic photographs of the area's movers and shakers -- even a sign from the Jim Crow era that hung in Union Station designating a "Colored Waiting Room."

Riley's collection grew so large he bought a fading 19th century mansion on St. Louis' former "Millionaires Row" and transformed it into a private museum. Now the tall stained glass windows that once served the building's former funeral home and church inhabitants overlook rooms of carefully curated collections of black St. Louis history. In the two years Riley and his wife have operated the George B. Vashon African-American Museum in north St. Louis, they estimate they've handled 5,000 visitors.

Virtually all of us know sad stories of personal history lost. It's up to each generation to evaluate, document and pass on the artifacts from previous generations. You can't count on a Calvin Riley to step in and save them.

Larry Lehmer is an author and personal history consultant. Contact him via e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Photo credit: Calvin Riley at the George B. Vashon African-American Museum in St. Louis. (Carolina Hidalgo, St. Louis Public Radio)

]]>Larry Lehmer2017-08-22T14:49:20-05:00His Dad has passed, but his Dadbot lives onhttps://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2017/08/john-vlahos-like-many-people-of-a-certain-age-would-probably-tell-you-that-his-life-was-nothing-special-to-those-who-loved.html
John Vlahos, like many people of a certain age, would probably tell you that his life was nothing special. To those who loved him, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The son of Greek immigrants, Vlahos was...John Vlahos, like many people of a certain age, would probably tell you that his life was nothing special. To those who loved him, of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

The son of Greek immigrants, Vlahos was raised in Northern California where he worked his way through college at the University of California, wrestling ice blocks onto boxcars. He was sports editor of the school newspaper, fueling a lifelong love of sports that later found him announcing football games from the Cal press box. He eventually became a respected Bay Area lawyer while nurturing another of his passions, opera. Along the way he married and raised a family.

But the Vlahos family was rattled by the grim April 2016 diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer that had spread to other vital organs in John Vlahos' 80-year-old body. Almost immediately his son, James, came up with an unusual plan to preserve his dad's legacy. James, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Popular Science and Wired, started with the time-tested tradition of saving his dad's stories.

Digital recorder in hand, James Vlahos started recording his dad's memories just weeks after the diagnosis. It was the first of more than a dozen sessions, most lasting more than an hour, that would result in a transcript of 91,970 words that filled 203 printed pages of 12 point type. But instead of just putting the transcript into a binder, James had another idea -- he'd create a "Dadbot," something of an electronic representation of his father similar to personal assistants Siri or Alexa.

The technical name for such a creation is chatbot, a digital companion capable of carrying on a conversation. The younger Vlahos knew his computer skills would only allow for a rudimentary chatbot, but he wasn't striving for a Siri-like relationship, he just wanted to preserve his dad's legacy in a uniquely dynamic way. Before formally launching his project, Vlahos persuaded his ailing father to go along with the scheme as long as he was able. As John's condition deteriorated, James' project blossomed. By the time John died earlier this year, James had a passable version of his Dadbot. He shared his experience with a touching article in a recent issue of Wired. The article also included a video.

Video selfies. Want to make a video of your own life story but don't have the necessary skills, equipment or money? No problem say the folks at Lifey. If you found this blog on the internet, you can probably make "a video selfie of one's life," as the Lifey web site describes their process, which they say is free. Check it out and report back about what your Lifey experience was like.

Larry Lehmer is an author and personal history consultant. Contact him via e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

]]>Larry Lehmer2017-08-12T13:51:22-05:00The voices that shaped our lives deserve savinghttps://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2017/06/the_voices_that.html
Oral history is hot. People everywhere are getting the message about recording their family stories. Whether on audiotape, videotape or digital media, there's nothing that compares with hearing a family story told by a family member. Although my primary business...

Oral history is hot.

People everywhere are getting the message about recording their family stories. Whether on audiotape, videotape or digital media, there's nothing that compares with hearing a family story told by a family member.

Although my primary business as a personal historian was putting together a written record of a family history, oral history was an integral part of the process. Much of a written record is based on recorded interviews which become part of the overall project.

I occasionally teamed up with a videographer to offer a comprehensive personal history package. Our collaboration made possible the best of both disciplines.

The written record provides an in-depth narrative record of the family's history that, besides providing interesting reading material, serves as a primary reference book. The accompanying 20- to 30-minute professional video captures the highlights of the written work visually, told by many of the book's "main characters."

National Public Radio carries excerpts from its StoryCorps project every Friday on its Morning Edition program. The StoryCorps project features two mobile recording studios that travel the country, recording the stories of everyday America. The stories are testaments to the power of the spoken word. Some are available at the StoryCorps web site.

But StoryCorps is not the only oral history project around. There are many. Check them out. Perhaps you'll find an interview with a long-lost relative. At the very least, you'll come away with some ideas on how to incorporate oral history into your own family history project.

]]>Family historyoral historyPersonal historyLarry Lehmer2017-06-02T10:13:43-05:00What's with this concern about a person's "last words"?https://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2017/01/pardon-me-i-didnt-do-it-on-purpose-those-are-allegedly-the-last-words-spoken-by-marie-antoinette-queen-of-france-after-s.html
"Pardon me. I didn't do it on purpose." Those are allegedly the last words spoken by Marie Antoinette, queen of France, after stepping on the foot of her executioner on her way to the guillotine. Last words are important to..."Pardon me. I didn't do it on purpose."

Those are allegedly the last words spoken by Marie Antoinette, queen of France, after stepping on the foot of her executioner on her way to the guillotine. Last words are important to many Americans, it seems. In a recent essay by hospice chaplain Kerry Egan on the PBS Newshour, Egan says "people are enormously curious about what people who are actively dying talk about."

Egan also points out that while many people expect to die a "Hollywood death," the real thing is almost always much different. Truth is, none of us knows our precise expiration date. Rather that spending time crafting some clever deathbed utterance, it makes more sense to say anything you have to say now when, presumably, you're less stressed.

Sounds like good advice to me. In fact, in my recent career as a personal historian, I encouraged people to draft their own legacy letters (some call them ethical wills, but that sounds a little stuffy to me.) You can find several articles on the subject by searching this blog for either term, or you can find one here.

It's really a cliché to say live every day as if it's your last, but most clichés have their roots in reality and this one passes that test. If you're one of those people who are interested in famous last words, you can click here and here. Or, if you prefer a little visual stimulation, here's a ditty from a group I actually interviewed in an even earlier career:

Larry Lehmer is an author and retired personal historian. Contact him via e-mail or follow him on Twitter

]]>Larry Lehmer2017-01-27T15:53:27-06:00Auschwitz discovery shows power of legacy lettershttps://whenwordsmatter.typepad.com/passing_it_on/2017/01/auschwitz-discovery-shows-power-of-legacy-letters.html
Legacy letters convey something of importance from the sender to another person. Whether eloquent or inarticulate in their presentation, legacy letters are often so emotionally powerful as to send the recipient reaching for a handkerchief. Such is the case with...

Legacy letters convey something of importance from the sender to another person. Whether eloquent or inarticulate in their presentation, legacy letters are often so emotionally powerful as to send the recipient reaching for a handkerchief.

Such is the case with the recently discovered “Auschwitz letter.” It’s possible that you missed the story, given the media’s interest in presidential puppies and Miss America gaffes, so here it is:

In 1944, a group of prisoners from the infamous Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, Poland was escorted about 100 yards outside the camp to work on reinforcing the cellar of a warehouse so it could be used as an air raid shelter for the camp’s soldiers.

Seven of the prisoners – six Poles and one Frenchman, all between the ages of 18 and 20 – tore a scrap of paper from a cement bag and scribbled a note in pencil. Although the exact details of the note have not been disclosed, it includes the names of the seven prisoners, their home towns and their assigned camp numbers.

They rolled the note, stuck it inside a bottle and hid it inside a concrete wall they were building. It was discovered by a construction crew that was recently renovating the site. Research shows that two of the Polish men survived the camp, but they have not been found.

The Frenchman, however, was Googled and located in Marseilles by a Polish newspaper reader. The man, 85-year-old Albert Veissid, confirmed that the camp number on the note matches that on his arm but does not remember anything about the note or bottle.

Imagine how meaningful it is for descendants of the four who didn’t survive the camp, to have this final message from their long-deceased relative. As one commenter at a Hamburg, German, newspaper said: “I think it was simply a case of we existed, remember us.”

Isn’t that we all want?

Writing prompt of the day: You have just 10 minutes to live. Write your own legacy letter. Quickly.

Larry Lehmer is an author and retired personal historian. Contact him via e-mail or follow him on Twitter.